


Just Being Neighborly

by TheCokeworthSnapes



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Muggle, Apartment AU, Gen, Pre-Poly, Pre-Relationship, Recreational Drug Use
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-28
Updated: 2015-11-28
Packaged: 2018-05-03 18:41:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,321
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5302580
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheCokeworthSnapes/pseuds/TheCokeworthSnapes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Tonks is convinced that her apartment is haunted and begs Lupin for help checking it out. He agrees, because he's high and she's cute." A response for an ask that exceeded sense and became a pre-poly one shot. In which three adults prove that adulthood is living until the something goes oddly and horribly wrong.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Just Being Neighborly

**Author's Note:**

  * For [syntheticcathedral](https://archiveofourown.org/users/syntheticcathedral/gifts).



To whom it may concern, in her final moments, Tonks was a saint. This is what she wanted written on the tombstone, or in a fancy note card presenting her urn on her mother's mantle. The “saint” bit was brief but incredibly important, she felt, since it said that murder by phantasm was clearly not her fault, whatever part in it she may have had. However she might have angered the spirit in her flat, she had done so unintentionally, and died before her time: as all saints do.

 

God, she wished she went to church more as a child. Her parents were atheists, sure, but if she knew about the undead at twelve, she would have read the scriptures like Bill's girl, Fleur, did on Sundays.

 

 _Fleur has a nice back,_ Tonks thought absently while crouched under her fold-up dining room table. The iffy metal latch had caught on the open hook of her bra, trapping her. Not that she intended on moving.

 

Artful, pale feet danced around her table as Fleur hunted for her clothes. Tonks rubbed her abraded arm with the spatula she brought with her for protection. Over her table was another, shuddering _thud!_

 

She bashed her head, swearing. The whole table jumped, and the answering bang drew another _thud_ from upstairs like a strange, ghostly mating call.

 

Fleur squeaked despite her disbelief. Then the other girl sighed in disgust and peeked under the table through a wash of silvery, blonde hair. She was not pleased.

 

“Are you planning on 'elping me get dressed,” the French woman demanded. She shook a fistful of frilly knickers at Tonks for effect.

 

Tonks saw half her expression—and winced—and tried to explain again. She wasn't crazy!

 

“I'm telling you, babe, there's—.”

 

“No,” interrupted Fleur. In a whiff of rose water perfume, her face—like a Rococo portrait—disappeared back out of sight. Muffled padding over the shag carpets turned to stomping and then clicking onto the creaky, hardwood floors.

 

Oh, great, at least she found her shoes. They had looked expensive, more than Tonks' one bedroom. Especially given the corpse of a slaughtered pensioner likely stuffed into her walls. Honestly, Fleur was the best smelling thing in her apartment, and she didn't want her to leave.

 

“Wait! Listen,” pleaded Tonks. She stuck her be-spatula-ed hand out and pointed to the ceiling.

 

A beat of silence, then— _thud-ud!_

 

Funny, too, since her mother never believed in ghosts, as part of not believing in souls. It was just her luck that Fleur didn't either.

 

If she had, maybe Tonks might have salvaged the evening, the once-in-a-lifetime chance to play doctor with the med student. The beautiful, insatiable whose run-ragged boyfriend had given a rare, one-use, no-refund gay hall pass. The gorgeous, smart, talented woman with whom Tonks had imagined a long, sweaty, irreverent night of lesbian hate sex since the moment she heard that accented English lilt call her “silly.”

 

Dreams of whose soft, clear skin haunted Tonks for weeks. For days longer than the thing in her building that had chosen that night, specifically, to make its presence unbearably obvious. She had just needed to settle into her apartment, clean it up, make it look less unfortunate, before inviting the other woman over. She had _just needed_ a place to be alone, with a bed and a shower and a door with a lock.

 

Not remnants of the deceased, not acidic stink oozing out of the wallpaper, not mysterious water stains shaped like tortured faces soaking through her ceiling. She didn't need any of those things. She certainly didn't need to be scared so shitless by the _thumping_ that it drove her from the bedroom, into the kitchen, and under her table.

 

Fleur had only tried to kiss her neck. Tonks—might have—screamed.

 

“There ees no-sing in ze apartment, and eef you did not want to sleep wiz me, you only needed to say so!”

 

Tonks swore, yanking herself out of the table hinge, and crawled out on her hands. She looked up to see Fleur fully dressed, red-faced and disheveled, clutching her purse and her phone. Tonks teared up a little, watching her dreams slip away in a puff of—

 

_Thud-dud-ud! Thump! BAM!_

 

Fleur huffed and brushed plaster dust from her suede blazer. Both women glared at the ceiling.

 

“Clearly, oo-ever ees moving in upstairs is very loud and very obnoxious,” she said in clipped tones. “It ees too bad that you like them more zen you like me!”

 

Tonks got dizzy trying to climb to her feet and shake her head at the same time. She bumped the corner of the table, yelped, bit her tongue, and limped after Fleur as the woman marched to her front door and threw it open.

 

“Goodbye,” Fleur tossed over her shoulder with a flip of her hair.

 

Tonks stuttered, reaching beseechingly with her free hand. But the door slammed shut. And the apartment upstairs had fallen quiet in its wake, letting her words flop around her feet.

 

“But...that apartment's empty. I swear...”

 

She stood swaying in her underwear, her torn bra sliding off one shoulder. Tonks sagged and let it fall out from under her arms. It sat in the carpet with everything else.

 

“Damn,” she muttered, biting her lip.

 

Gradually, she became aware of a sticky, wet heat pouring down on her. She figured it was the suffocating humiliation, but the dampness clashed with a shock of cold air blowing over her shoulders. She froze; and let her eyes inch upwards.

 

An oily, black stain spread out over her ceiling. A fat glob of it dripped from the mess and splattered into the bowl of the lamp cover. Tonks slowly stepped out from under it.

 

A buzzing shriek followed the sizzle of the goop hitting the light bulb. As it burned, it reeked of old meat. _Pop!_ went the light. She ran screaming through the shower of hot glass.

 

Tonks followed Fleur out the door, wildly swinging her spatula to and fro. She beat back the invisible demon, cold toes slipping on the hallway tiles. She flew over the stairs to the first floor, until she skirted up to Room 1A: the landlady's house. Panting, knees shaking, she pummeled with her fists and shouted the old bag's name.

 

–

 

Remus looked at his front door, panicked. Someone was knocking on it. Trying to beat it down, actually, and shouting for him to open up. Scrambling, he dropped everything from his lap—book, snack bowl, ashtray. He scratched his head and read the time on the digital clock.

 

2:12 AM. Oh god, did a neighbor call the police!?

 

“Open up, you lying relic! Open this damn door or I swear to Christ!”

 

“One-one second, please,” called Remus. He cursed softly and brush the scattered pot ashes into his—oh, dammit—further into his armchair upholstery.

 

He straightened up and thumbed sweat from his nose and wiped it on his jeans—hairy? Legs. He didn't have any—he was in his—he coughed into his arm and searched for his sweats. Whoever it was had caught him in the altogether after his bath. His gran always warned him against air-drying because, “What if there was a fire? You'd be out and out, wouldn't ya?”

 

He found a pair of athletic shorts draped over his chair arm. He scoped out his living room and, with a tinkling clatter, started throwing his smoking things into their shoe box. His front door was shaking with how hard the person on the other end was banging—god, they might have been crying now. Crying?

 

Remus held his breath, confused, and listened. Yes, the person in the hallway was sobbing. He couldn't think of if Mrs. Figg next door ever cried when he owed rent. Certainly not when he partook in his medicines, as long as he was polite about it. She couldn't smell anything through all of her cats anyway.

 

“Pleeeease, help me-hee,” wailed the person at his door. Remus cleared his throat and considered pretending he wasn't home.

 

But then there was rather pitiful slap on the lower side of the wood and his heart went out to the stranger on the other side. Dizzy with fading adrenaline, Remus gathered himself while looking for a shirt. He grabbed a jumper from the folding closet and pulled it on.

 

“Yes, hullo,” he inquired through the crack in his door. He kept the chain on, just in case it was an invasion. As he spoke, he became very aware of the taste of his own breath. “Can I help...erm...”

 

The woman at his door was naked. Well, mostly naked, and wielding kitchen tools. He blinked rapidly, and then wondered if his over-warm eyes had finally hallucinated. He'd never done that before, he didn't think.

 

The nude stranger blinked up at him, heart-shaped face all bright with blushing. Her pale grey eyes were huge, and dewy, almost, in the dirty yellow hall light. A lock of dye-fried, pink hair fell onto the corner of her mouth.

 

Remus sweat.

 

“Who...where the hell is Figg?”

 

Her voice was keening and stressed. She bobbed onto the balls of her feet to look into his apartment; Remus yanked his door closer and wedged himself into her view. He may have choked on his own air, though, when he tried to speak. Her breasts were—.

 

“2A,” he replied.

 

“What?”

 

Remus hummed and tried to remember what he meant. Right. “Mrs. Figg is next door, in 1A. This is 2A, easy mistake, er. But she's not in, because she's—well—out.”

 

“Out where!? She's a hundred years fucking old, where is she going out to at night? Crack den bingo night?”

 

“Possibly,” Remus admitted. He didn't know Arabella's life. “I meant she's asleep.”

 

He asked if the woman needed something from him, or maybe some clothes. If she was hurt, was there someone she needed to call, or...

 

“Ghosts,” she proclaimed, sniffling messily.

 

Remus watched, only a little disturbed, as she dragged her forearm across her face. He followed the now-shiny arm down to its—it rested across her stomach and she had—he didn't know one could pierce the skin directly below the bellybutton.

 

“I'm sorry, what? I don't follow.”

 

“I live i-in, um, 6C,” the woman explained.

 

Remus nodded, vaguely recalling that there had been a new tenant recently.

 

The woman had stopped talking. She looked distractedly up the stairs. Remus ducked out of his doorway and followed her long stare, but saw nothing. He looked back at her slowly, carefully, so as not to startle her or himself.

 

“Right, 6C,” he prompted. The girl looked back at him with wide eyes, and quirked an eyebrow.

 

“You can't mean that you don't hear that,” she said accusingly. Remus scratched his scruffy chin, unsure of what she wanted from him.

 

“I might mean it, actually,” he answered with a shrug. He wondered if maybe the woman was cold—she certainly looked, with her nip, uh—was she having a nervous break, perhaps? “I'm sorry, is there something you need? It's late and I was er, asleep...so I'm not equipped to deal with,” he gestured to all of her, “this.”

 

With a whoosh of air, the business end of the spatula landed smack on his cupid's bow. The naked neighbor hissed something as she menaced him. Either she was aggressively hungry, which he could help, or certifiable insane, which he could not. He held up his hands in surrender.

 

She squinted at him something fierce. He raised his hands higher, then his brows. He twitched the corners of his mouth into a placating smile, just for good measure. He kept smiling while she gathered her thoughts. His thoughts were mostly lamenting that this wasn't his strangest night, by far. It was worse when he had roommates.

 

This girl couldn't be very dangerous, unless she threatened to make him breakfast. He felt this up until he heard a shaking sigh.

 

Alarmed, he refocused. The small woman shifted her weight: a little back and generally downwards. While he had been staring through her forehead, her eyes had gone wet and sad. He made a noise in his throat and she looked up.

 

“Sorry, man,”she mumbled. “I'm sorry, I just. Oh, god.”

 

She continued to sink toward the ground in stop-motion collapse. Like a cartoon miming defeat. Her face flushed bright red on the way down, too, and Remus could imagine the pitying trumpets honking in the meta-sound. _Wamp-wamp-waaaamp._

 

She plucked herself in the forehead. Pressed a hand over the spot, and wrinkled her nose. Remus watched her do these things and figured she must have been having a pretty bad night.

 

“Sorry about this,” she spoke into the heel of her hand. Remus waited for more until it came. “I know you were probably relaxing, and I planned to be relaxing too, I mean—well, maybe not relaxing. Getting a leg over before relaxing, but—ugh, and you seem so nice and to-yourself. You have a calm presence and everything.”

 

“Thank you?”

 

“You're welcome.”

 

Her face was in both her hands. She crouched fully in front of his door, now, and he hoped she didn't plan to sleep there. “I'm really, really sorry. I just wanna speak to Figg. I want my security deposit back and I just, tonight I couldn't take it anymore. I gotta go.”

 

“Figg's not here.” Remus shuffled, hesitating, and then crouched down next to her. “She's usually pretty honest about this place at the onset, though, so I know it isn't great. I've been here long enough to see some things.”

 

“Yeah, I bet,” she scoffed, still head in hands.

 

“Hmm,” he pondered his worst story. “One bloke had a dog in his apartment when he wasn't there. It barked all afternoon and then when he brought women over at night, you could hear...well, Figg, who usually is lenient about pets, was good to warn him about it. Threatened to call the animal police on him, even. She can help you with your neighbor if you need it.”

 

“My neighbors are ghosts.”

 

“And I'm sure she will deal with that when she can. This building attracts a lot of stranger folk.”

 

“Figg's bloody building is haunted like shit. Damn scraping and bumping upstairs all night, every night, and this _stench_ like, it's barely there, but you can feel it in your nose, constantly. Like the whistle that drives dogs mad but in smell form. And sometimes it feels like the walls are humming? I thought it was something electrical, but then sometimes the lights go out and it's louder all of a sudden.

 

“It sucks because I don't even have the money to move again, you know? But if I lived in a motel, I wouldn't have to worry about dead people. Drug dealers, sure, but that's to be expected of most any place, really.”

 

“True.”

 

She paused. One grey eye peeked out at him from between her fingers.

 

“You're a good listener.”

 

“Thank you again.”

 

“You're welcome again,” she said, returning to her despair. Remus smiled less and then, accidentally, more. She was cute.

 

“It's probably cold down there,” he offered.

 

“Hmm,” she looked down at herself. She pinked, but shrugged. “Mm-hmm, freezing my nips off. Hope you don't mind too much.”

 

“No, you're alright. Here...”

 

He leaned back into his apartment to pull down his beige cardigan. He stood, unlatched and opened his door in order to pass it off, and returned to her level. Yawning, he stretched on the paneling by his threshold and rested his head on the wall.

 

He watched his own fingers while she wrapped her herself in his clothes. She grunted that she was finished, at which point Remus offered the woman his hand.

“Remus,” he introduced himself. She hummed, saw his hand, and took it in both of hers. The spatula handle pressed across his wrist.

 

“Tonks,” she replied with a close-lipped smile. Then she caught sense of her own aloofness, it seemed, because she grinned and laughed. “You must think I'm completely nutso!”

 

“Not completely. A fair bit, but there is nothing wrong with that,” he inclined his head toward their seats on the hallway floor. “Obviously it makes for unique introductions.”

 

“Ah, yeah. Thank the ghosts, mate! Bringing people together in their hour of need.”

 

“Are you serious about this haunting business?”

 

Tonks sighed and ran a hand through her hair. The hand stayed cupped around the nape of her neck. Its fingernails were bitten to the quick.

 

“I don't know what else it could be. I asked Figg and she swore that there was nobody on the fourth floor, not in 6D or anywhere. Something about the wiring, but the place isn't fit for moving into.”

 

Remus frowned, thinking. He had moved in back when there were a few residents up on the top floor. A couple of loners, one elderly mother and her adult son, a pair of newlyweds, and some graduate students. They trickled down and eventually out after flooding ruined the circuits.

 

Somebody had to live up there, though, he thought. Remus had once received a parcel of someone else's addressed to that floor. Brought to his doorstep—he couldn't recall the receiver's name, Seth something. He remembered directing the delivery man to the stairs.

 

This was just a few weeks ago, in face. He figured Arabella had finally deemed those flats open for renting.

 

“Are you sure?,” he asked Tonks. She tilted her head and stared at him, unimpressed.

 

“Do I look like I'm unsure.”

 

Remus inhaled deeply and tried to calm himself. His palms were sweating again, and his calmness broke a little on the uncertainty. He distinctly remembered mail going to the fourth floor, but no tenants? He felt a chill.

 

“...ck it out with me.”

 

“What?”

 

Tonks was on her knees, looking at him. She got closer to stare closer and practically crawled into his lap.

 

“Check it out with me,” she repeated as if speaking to a child. “Come to 6D and check it out.”

 

“Why me?”

 

“I said you were a good listener.”

 

He waited for her to make sense. She elaborated, giddy with her own plan. She climbed off of the ground and gave him her hand. He stared at it, then up its arm back to its owner's face.

 

“Ghosts have unfinished business, yeah? You could probably help it, I dunno, find peace.”

 

Remus took her hand and squeezed before letting it go. Three fingers left his grip before it slid back and wrapped around his wrist.

 

Tonks grinned at him, and he saw, to his dismay, that she had a perfect dimple in her chin when she smiled. Resigned, he let her tug him from the floor.

 

“I would rather not,” he protested, for effect mostly. He was already suggestible, with it being half-past two in the morning, on his night off, and his cardigan having swallowed most of the woman's tiny form except for her legs, feet, and devilishly persuasive face.

 

Tonks thanked him for his help, over and over, before asking if she might borrow a pair of shoes and some light.

 

“Oh, and holy water, if you have it. That sounds exorcising, don't you think?”

 

–

 

Dressed in a borrowed, knit throw-over and sandals, Tonks powered through the unlit stairway to the fourth floor. Figg's neighbor, Remus, followed behind, shining the screen of his cellphone into the dark.

 

They spoke in low tones—well, she did, describing the incident from earlier that drove her to conclude about her impending death by possession. Remus pointed out, rather patiently, that he doubted a person could die purely from the experience of being possessed. Tonks shushed him and pointed to the den of her nightmares.

 

Apartment 6D stood out beyond the adjacent flats for two reasons. Firstly, the fog of odor that rolled down the corridor seeped out from the seams of the door. Secondly, the entire floor was vibrating.

 

They came closer and Tonks saw, with a shiver, that someone had insulated the cracks in the door frame with foam and duct tape. The padding looked torn from a bus seat and was saturated with moisture.

 

It was the separation of the door panels themselves that allowed for putrid smells and heavy steam to pour out onto the floor below. The door had bowed outward, the swollen wood distending like a starving stomach, and again, following a heart-stopping _THUD_ a voracious rumble shook the air.

 

Tonks backpedaled into Remus and suggested they turn around. If anything, coming up had only convinced her that leaving for her mother's house was the best idea. She had no intentions of living below what was obviously a site of demon habitation and, most likely, human sacrifice.

 

Curiously, the man was calm. Muttering about music, he stepped up and, around Tonks' whispered protest, knocked. The rumbling from 6D grew louder and stopped abruptly. She held her breath, but nothing happened. The smell went on, and the walls kept oozing damp heat, but other than that, there was nothing.

 

Remus looked back at her, eyebrow furrowed, and shrugged. He tried the doorknob, finding it stuck, and raised his fist to knock again. She regretted bringing him when, after his knocking turning to rattling of the knob with an intent to _open the door,_ she heard a creak.

 

The creak was slow: _cree-eak,_ like a wayward teenager finding the loose stair and negotiating a quiet retreat. Somehow, this thought made her look to her side, and from a flash of black cloth, Tonks saw a snarl and screamed.

 

She backed up so much she tripped over Remus, who had surged forward, and both of them fell in a lunge toward the demon tenant. Tonks landed on top, chin hitting the hard toe of a scuffed, salt-stained boot.

 

The foot cocked back and she only just rolled out of the way before it stomped through a cloud of steam toward her head. Remus shouted something and shoved out from under her.

 

The demon hacked at them and aimed a kick at Remus' shin. The man dodged, letting the foot careen into the sodden door. With a crash, the steel toe ripped open the wood. Outwards erupted the apartment, gas escaping the hole in the door. The demon wrestled its leg from the mess and growled.

 

God, it was terrifying! Crooked, yellowed teeth gnashed behind a white medical mask, and slick, oily hair hung and clung to a gaunt, furious face. Spidery limbs lost in dirty jeans and rolled up sleeves stretched out of a plastic apron torso, splattered with sheen and gore. Ash and iodine stained its already sallow hands.

 

The ghost cursed at them, and took off down the hall.

 

Tonks, in a flash of adrenaline, took chase. She heard Remus call her back, but it didn't register as a call to stop. Instead, his yelling her name spurred her on.

 

And so she feinted around one corner than another after the monster, vaulting over stacks of flattened cardboard and plastic sheeting, chasing it into the fourth floor. It glared at her in a quick cut left, sneering and diving into a dark apartment, slamming the door on her as she shouldered her way through. She grunted, winded, and bounced off to land on her back in a tarp full of plaster dust.

 

The demon cackled from inside the other door, and with a clatter, Tonks realized that it had tried to lock itself in. However, it swore and she heard more stomping, so when Remus came stumbling around the corner, she only pushed him off of her and tackled the ghost as it emerged from the flat in a panic.

 

“AH! AHAH! I GOT YOU NOW, YOU COCK BLOCKIN' BASTARD.”

 

“Off! Get—DON'T TOUCH ME.”

 

“GO BACK TO HELL!”

 

She struggled when the ghost got the best of her in the tumble. It sat straddling her hips, tugging the mask over its face with one hand while it fended her off with the other. Granted, she was only slapping at its arms at this point, but soon enough she saw that it, the demon, was just a man, and did what came first to mind.

 

–

 

Remus jogged up to Tonks and the man from 6D. They were somersaulting, one over the other, through a square foot of grit and refuse. At one point, Tonks got a grip on a half-brick holding down the corner of a tarp. It was quickly knocked from her hand. He decided to step in, trying to think on how to pull them apart, hoping to get an arm around the man's neck.

 

The man jerked away from Tonks. He batted away her flailing knees and feet and hands, grabbing at her ankles while she screamed obscenities. She fell onto her shoulders, legs akimbo, when he threw her bodily off of him as he made to stand. The bastard then got to his feet, with a growl, and tried to shake her off his leg. She shouted, holding on for dear life.

 

With a growl, the bastard started dragging her by one foot like a caveman. Remus stepped in, lifting a piece of drywall for protection.

 

“Let her go!” He swung his dry wall and watched it snap under its own weight. Scoffing, he threw it down.

 

The man scowled at him and tossed her leg away. The sandal had long since been run off her foot, so the white-powdered and grimy toes took time to find purchase on the ground. Remus hurried to help her up; meanwhile, the other man limped away.

 

“Come back here,” shouted Tonks, propped up by Remus' hands under her armpits. Her legs splayed out under her, unable to hold her up.

 

“Piss off,” retorted the other man, spitting something from between his teeth before limping down the hall.

 

The apron flapped off of his neck, the holster tie having popped. He carried himself, a wounded bat, toward the fire stairs. Remus stood, conflicted about chasing him down. If he let go of Tonks, he wasn't sure if she would be okay to follow. What if the man wasn't alone? What if the woman was hurt?

 

“Get back here, or I swear to God, I will go over there and drag you back” threatened Remus. Tonks made a noise that might have been a cheer, or her choking on dust.

 

The man, however, froze. For a second, he was just a back and legs and boots, until he swayed and backed out of the shadows. Slowly, he turned to Remus, and narrowed beetle-black, bloodshot eyes.

 

“Excuse me,” said the man in a deep, soft voice. He said it almost politely.

 

Remus glared back, holding his ground. He eased Tonks into a sitting position on the floor and repeated what he had said, only this time adding, “I'm not afraid of you. Nor are the police.”

 

\--

 

Severus' eyes stayed narrowed, but the rest of him was still. The couple was quiet while they watched him make up his mind.

 

“I'll be gone before they arrive,” he promised in return. Severus cocked his head and asked, “You tryna fight?”

 

The man, sharp-eyed for a second, started to fade around the corners. He glanced at the woman sitting on his feet and sighed, shaking his head.

 

“Honestly,” the man said, “no. I'm only here for the ghosts.”

 

“You've made my life miserable for weeks, you jackass,” piped up the woman.

 

Severus looked at her and rolled his eyes. If this was the tenant that lived below him, then he had nothing to say to her. At all hours, she slammed doors and played loud music and whatever monstrosity she birthed in her trash kept floating up through the vents. He hoped on some level that flightiness or standards would drive her out of the building. But if confronting her meant he had to leave, he'd be damned.

 

He stared long and hard at the woman on the floor, then at the man behind her. Frowning, Severus made his escape.

 

\--

 

The next morning dawned onto Remus' face. He groaned and rolled into the wedge of his couch. Breathing in stale cushion and ladies' deodorant reminded him of the night before.

 

He cracked open an eye to see his upstairs neighbor still curled into his armchair. Tonks was mostly just a cardigan, painted toes, and a tuft of pink hair that rose and fell with whistling snores.

 

“My lights are out,” she had said. “I'll make you pancakes if you let me stay the night. I'd need to use your spatula, though, I think I lost mine.”

 

He watched her sleep for a few seconds and let her lull him back into a doze. Then, just as he began to drift, he heard the rapid, tidy knocks at his door. His Pavlovian response was to apologize about his rent, which woke him right up. He levered himself off the couch and answered his landlady's second burst of knocks with half a friendly hello.

 

“Good mor—.”

 

“Remus,” greeted Arabella Figg.

 

The shrunken old maid waved with the paw of the fat calico spilling from her spindly arms. She then tittered at her own silliness and invited herself into his flat. Behind her, a man stared disinterestedly into Remus' face, much like a cat himself. The other man was dressed head-to-toe in black—turtleneck, jeans, and steel-toe boots—and had such poor regard in his face for Remus that it almost masked the glimmer of concern.

 

Remus, however, was a type raised to sense things like uncertainty in others. Behind them, Mrs. Figg tutted at Tonks, who sputtered awake when prodded and asked to say hello.

 

“My, you move fast, don't you, dear,” the old woman said with a saucy wink. “Anyhow, Remus Lupin, you've done me such a favor, you have no idea! Professor Snape says you two dug him up, when here I was looking everywhere but up!”

 

“Professor?” asked Tonks, blearily.

 

“Snape,” said Remus, to the man in question, looking to him for confirmation. Snape, as he was called, only stared back at him.

 

He had yet to enter the apartment, despite Remus standing aside to invite him in. He found the man seemed a lot less detestable in the daylight, when not dressed to butcher children with the cover of night. In real time, Snape even looked a bit like a professor, despite not being much older than Remus himself.

 

Well, actually, with him hovering in the doorway, neither coming in or going away, the man more resembled a house cat than anything.

 

“Would you,” Remus invited, “want to come in...Professor?”

 

“Honestly...,” Snape drawled, “no.”

 

Remus' cheek twitched. When the professor swept past, he nodded once at Remus and moved to stand, putting furniture between himself and everyone else. It might have been a timid move, if it wasn't done so confidently that it suggested simple misanthropy and an unwillingness to share anyone's immediate company. Pleasant, Snape was.

 

“I'm sorry, Mrs. Figg, how was it that we helped you again? I'm afraid I don't understand.”

 

Remus closed the door and moved to stand behind the couch. Incidentally, he noticed in his periphery Snape tense and slither away. Smirking, Remus waited a moment before sliding closer again. Again, Snape avoided him.

 

He saw Tonks cough, covering a laugh, while he chased the man around the living room. Arabella Figg chattered on, shooing her cat from an outlet.

 

“Well,” went on their landlady, not noticing the dance. “You see, Severus and his mother used to live on my fourth floor, before that Riddle man flooded my pipes. I felt so terrible sending them away while I fixed the damage, and remember Remus I was so upset to have to move you from third to first floor, but these things happen. That part of the building just isn't livable.

 

“And I keep in touch with the other residents from time to time, to update them on how things are going, you know. Some of them have no place to go, you know, and I like to tell them 'Such and such, that flat is yours if you want it, only four months more, only three months more.'

 

“But Severus here, and his mother, why they just disappeared! Just as soon as they got the news to leave—poof! I've felt so horrible about it all this time. Then last night he comes to my house in person to say, 'Mrs. Figg, I admit I never left. This person and that person saw me doing my lab work upstairs, I worry that they may bring you trouble.' Oh, and then when he described you two? I nearly fainted, right there, right into my drink!

 

“Speaking of which: Remus, might I bother you for a glass of water? My throat is sticking together, dear, I'm all dried up.”

 

“Of course,” he returned.

 

He went to his cupboards, but he kept a mind on the conversation in other room. The apartment was small enough that they were practically in his ear. He heard Arabella continue to speak with Tonks. She said her words as if the woman was as much a renter for 2A as Remus was. The thought was amusing, if strange.

 

“And since he has his operation here, I told him, 'of course, you can stay!' He will have to pay rent, of course, but—right, professor, didn't I say—I thought he could live in an available apartment downstairs to get at his things on the top floor. Much more convenient.”

 

“I wasn't aware that there were any more apartments left,” added Tonks, accepting a mug of tea from Remus.

 

He gave Mrs. Figg a mug from tray as well, a different size and color than the last, and offered the last to Snape. The man accepted the mug after a moment, but did not drink from it, only held it in his hand and frowned into it. Remus hummed and sipped his own breakfast blend from a Christmas mug.

 

“Oh, there aren't,” smiled Mrs. Figg. “That is why he'll be staying with Remus.”

 

Remus bit his tongue and swallowed a curse. He stared at Snape and was watched blankly in response. He wanted to ask if he had agreed to this arrangement. Something on his face communicated his question, because Snape crossed his arms, swallowed from his mug, and scowled.

 

“It's your fault I got caught,” accused his movements. Remus felt this was an unfair turn of events, even if this was the case.

 

Tonks, for her part, was quiet. Then after a moment, she rubbed her eyes, complained about the ungodly hour, and tucked her feet back into the chair. She burrowed further into the cardigan, dropped her head onto the chair, and slept.

 

“This isn't even my flat for real,” she mused to the room at large. Remus raised an eyebrow and by chance traded a look with Snape.

 

“I'm feeling a bit similarly myself,” he said.

 

Snape grunted, drank again from the mug—did he even taste it, or—and wandered into the kitchen. Remus heard things being moved and refused to turn and see what. Tonks had a point: it was much too early after much too late a night to care.

 

After a few more minutes of speaking, Mrs. Figg gathered her cat and wished the three of them a fine morning. She left in a haze of cabbage and fur, and closed the door behind her with a faint click.

 

“Unbelievable,” mouthed Remus to his reflection in his tea. Tonks had snorted and turned over to go back to sleep—he wasn't inclined to excuse her. Snape, for his part, just looked at the door and harrumphed.

“That woman is without a single qualm, I swear,” muttered Remus, mostly to himself.

 

“I'm surprised she still likes the cats.”

 

“Huh?” Tonks lifted her head and squinted at Snape. He looked back at her and then away.

 

“Figg loves those cats,” answered Remus, “there is no way she'd give them away.”

 

“I mean, I doubt she can,” Snape went on. He brought the mug up to his nose and sniffed. Tonks gave him a strange look but said nothing. “I just mean, even if I had to stay with those animals for eternity, I would hardly seem so pleased about it.”

 

“She hardly has eternity left, Snape,” said Tonks. “I mean, if we're being frank.”

 

Snape shook his head and pointed at the wall that Remus shared with Arabella.

 

“Arabella Figg died in 1980. I was the one to find her body,” he stated, matter of fact. He could have commented on the weather, for all his aplomb.

 

Remus and Tonks started laughing, expecting a joke. When their giggling petered out, however, he stared at them, vaguely disturbed.

 

“I don't see how that's funny,” he admitted, scowling. He lowered his pointing finger and moved to top up his mug from the kettle.

 

“She had no family. She had been dead for so long that the cats began eating her body. It was in the papers. Well, in the filler pages. There was no obituary I can recall, although I do remember a sale on camphor in the advertisements. I had an autopsy exam that day, as well, so it all came off as cosmically relevant.”

 

The room was silent, except for Snape slurping his tea. The cup cabinet above the stove gaped at them. Flies flitting in and out of its depths, carrying from a spreading water stain that had begun to warp the wood.

 

“It's brave of you to live right next door to her,” Snape finished, placing his mug in the sink. “I'm sure she appreciates the company.”

 

Then the professor put his hands in his jeans pockets and asked to be pointed toward his room.

 

 

 

 


End file.
